Mumbai: Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness in the Mumbai cruise drug case of 2021 suffered a heart attack and died in his rented apartment in the Mahul area on Friday afternoon.
Advocate Tushar Khandare, who was representing him, confirmed the death while stating that Sail was at home and the family did not suspect foul play behind his death.
Sail is survived by his mother, wife and two children and the family had decided to wait for his brothers to arrive from the village before the cremation would take place.
Sail was the personal security guard of another witness, KP Gosawi, in the drug cruise case in which the son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, Aryan Khan, was the first one to be arrested. However, Gosawi had posted a picture of himself with Aryan and was even seen pulling his hand and taking him to the NCB office.
Soon after Maharashtra cabinet minister Nawab Malik raised the issue of a private individual like Gosawi being made a witness in the case and asked what was Gosawi doing dragging Aryan into the NCB office.
After Gosawi’s role became suspect and he was arrested by Pune police in a case pending before them, Sail filed an affidavit. Sail, also an independent witness of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), made headlines after he claimed to have overheard a conversation about an alleged pay-off involving NCB zonal director Sameer Wankhede and Gosawi.
The NCB SIT in one of its documents stated that they needed to record a statement of Gosawi, who is in jail. The document stated that another witness, i.e. Prabhakar Sail has turned hostile. Thus, in such a situation, “examination of KP Gosawi becomes necessary and pivotal to unearth the true and correct facts of this case”, the document read.
Although another witness in the case, Sam D’souza, too levelled allegations against Gosawi and Sail, stating they had taken the money. However, the allegations levelled by each one is still under probe when Sail has passed away.
Early in October last year, Aryan Khan was arrested in connection with a drugs case on a Mumbai cruise. After several court hearings and 26 long days in custody, the Bombay High Court granted Aryan bail on October 28.
He finally walked out of jail on October 30, just in time for his father’s birthday.